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This paper aims to assess whether the current eResearch Knowledge Centre’s (eRKC) research support practices align with researchers’ requirements for achieving their research objectives. The study’s objectives were to assess the current eRKC research support services and to determine which are adequate and which are not in supporting the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) researchers.

This study uses interviews as part of the qualitative approach. The researcher chose to use interviews, as some aspects warranted further explanation during the interview. The interviews were scheduled using Zoom’s scheduling assistant. The interviews were semi-structured, guided by a flexible interview procedure and supplemented by follow-up questions, probes and comments. The research life cycle questions guided the interviews. The data obtained were coded and transcribed using MS Excel. The interview data were analysed, using NVivo, according to the themes identified in the research questions and aligned with the theory behind the study. Pre-determined codes were created in line with the six stages of the research life cycle and applied to group the data and extract meaning from each category. Interviewee responses were assigned to groups in line with the stages of the research life cycle.

The current eRKC research support services are aligned with the needs of HSRC researchers and highlight services that could be expanded or promoted more effectively to HSRC researchers. It proposes a new service, data analysis, and suggests that the eRKC could play a more prominent role in research impact, research data management and fostering collaboration with HSRC research divisions.

This study is limited to assessing the eRKC’s support practices at the HSRC in Pretoria, South Africa. A more comprehensive study is needed for HSRC research services, capabilities and capacity.

Assessment of eRKC followed a comprehensive interviewee schedule that followed Raju and Schoombee’s research life cycle model.

Zoom’s scheduling assistant may have generated Zoom fatigue and reduced productivity. Technical issues, losing time, communication gaps and distant time zones may have affected face-to-face interaction.

eRKC research support practices are rare in South Africa and most parts of the world. This study bridges the gap between theory and practice in assessing eRKC research support practices.

The purpose of this paper is to present a unique insight into the impact of decision framing and overconfidence on decision‐making effectiveness.

Conceptual with a case study/illustration.

The findings support the paper's theoretical assertions regarding the potentially positive impact of negative framing in the context of overconfidence and the potentially negative impact of positive framing under this context.

Case study/illustration (not empirical).

This research helps identify decision‐making situations which can dramatically alter the effectiveness of decision‐making processes. Decision makers need to know how factors such as overconfidence and framing can enhance or impede the quality of decisions generated.

Highly original – it challenges the traditional view of framing and overconfidence as automatic impediments to effective decision making.

This study has two objectives. First, to predict the outcomes of a public sector downsizing; second to measure effects of downsizing at organizational and inter‐organizational levels. Primary data to assess the organizational level effects was collected through interviews with senior executives at two of Metro‐Toronto's hospitals. Secondary data, to assess the inter‐organizational effects, was collected from government documents and media reports. Due to the exploratory nature of the study's objectives a case study method was employed. Most institutional downsizing practices aligned with successful outcomes. Procedures involved at the inter‐organizational level aligned with unsuccessful outcomes and negated organizational initiatives. This resulted in an overall alignment with unsuccessful procedures. The implication, based on private sector downsizings, is that the post‐downsized hospital system was more costly and less effective.

The background to this paper is the increasing interest in the relationship between housing and municipal services and HIV/AIDS. The purpose of this paper is to clarify what, precisely, one has in mind when thinking that housing and municipal services might prevent HIV infection and associated opportunistic infections. The focus is not on the socioeconomic dimensions but on the modes of transmission associated with specific opportunistic infections. That is, the paper first disputes the relevance of housing and services to HIV prevention, but then demonstrates that housing and municipal services are important for (a) the prevention of certain opportunistic infections to which people affected by HIV/AIDS are particularly vulnerable, and (b) for the provision of home-based care.

In addition to the medical focus of the paper, there is attention to the empirical backdrop on the relation between housing, municipal services and HIV/AIDS, analysing survey findings regarding among whom and where HIV prevalence is highest, and projections regarding the extent of HIV infections and AIDS based on the World Health Organization clinical staging system. Using Johannesburg as a case study, it is demonstrated that the number of persons having AIDS is smaller than one might expect and also that the number is already declining, which has implications for the provision of home-based care. However, it is also shown that the number of households that lost one or several members is increasing rapidly. In this context, labour force surveys are employed to identify the impacts on specific categories of households. At this stage, a defining unknown is the scale, nature and location of these reconstituted households and what this means for housing policy.

Finally, a feature of the research was the extent to which medical practitioners viewed housing as a quixotic sideline within the broader struggle for HIV prevention and the provision of treatment. In sum, the paper provides an argument for incorporating housing and municipal services into both HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment programmes.

The purpose of this paper is to report the formative evaluation results from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Healthy School Communities (HSC) pilot project.

This study utilized 11 HSC pilot sites in the USA (eight sites) and Canada (three sites). The evaluation question was “What are the levers of change in a school community that allow for the initiation and implementation of best practice and policy for improving school health?” Pre- and post-site visits along with in-depth interviews with school teams, teachers, students, administrators, community stakeholders and other involved individuals, school site report reviews, Healthy School Report Card results and school improvement plans were used for evaluation purposes.

This study identified nine levers of change: principal as leader of the HSC efforts; active and engaged leadership; distributive team leadership; effective use of data for continuous school improvement; integration of the HSC process with the school improvement process; ongoing and embedded professional development; authentic and mutually beneficial community collaborations; stakeholder support of the local HSC effort; and creation or modification of school policy related to HSC that increased the likelihood that school improvement via health promotion would be pursued and sustained.

Owing to the qualitative methods used in this study and the number of schools in the pilot project, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed evaluation question further.

This study has implications for schools seeking to create sustainable, systemic integration of health and education for effective health-promoting schools and continuous school improvement.

This study provides evidence that integration of health and education can become a sustainable and integral part of a school’s culture.

A thematic analysis of teachers’ experiences in implementing the Annual National Assessments (ANAs) policy in South Africa was presented in this chapter. Describing the lack of preparation and capacity building on behalf of policy makers, this chapter argued that teachers’ roles in the policy formulation of the ANAs positioned them as only policy implementers without agency. Two broad categories described the experiences. The first was concerned with the preparation process of assessments. The second was concerned with the implications of assessments, outlining the worry and fear in the use of results for teacher blaming culminating in a standoff between teacher unions and the ministry. The shift in the policy mandate expressed through increased reporting and monitoring requirements for poor performing schools reveals that the assessments deviated from being a diagnostic tool to testing for teacher accountability. Finally, the chapter concluded with a reflection on how the National Assessment Framework, set to replace the ANA policy, could be strengthened based on the opportunities revealed by the ANA policy implementation process.

The paper presents the results and discusses the implications of a national survey of South African health professionals which found extraordinarily high levels of dissatisfaction with working and living conditions in the country. Emigration potential is very high, and retention strategies have been largely unsuccessful. The survey findings suggest that remedial efforts within South Africa will not slow the brain drain. This has serious negative repercussions for the quality and level of health care available to patients in the country. The only workable retention strategy is for Western countries to stop issuing immigration and work permits to South African health professionals, a policy that would be consistent with their attitude to most other South African workers. However, as long as health professional shortages continue in Western countries and their immigration policy remains divorced from their international development policy, this scenario seems unlikely.

Leadership development is an essential yet complex process that manifests over a long period of time. Owusu et al. assert that in African researchers’ graduate programs, the learners receive theory, research methods and grant writing instruction without significant attention to leadership development. So, how do researchers, academics, administrators, and think-tanks plan and carry out leadership–followership development within organizational and transitional justice fields? The research capacity building of young African scholars in the knowledge production community has the potential to lead to the development and articulation of norms and values that will seek to address fundamental issues of transformation, direct, structural, and cultural violence, and assist in addressing a wide range of problems associated with violence of social injustice. We draw lessons from the Africa Young Graduate Scholars (AYGS) 2017 conference and writing retreat, which drew 22 young scholars (with 10 females and 12 males) who had completed original research and five facilitators (two females and three males) from universities in Botswana, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe for developing research leader–follower insights.

Building research leadership–followership capacity in knowledge production communities in the context of conflict prevention is crucial for establishing sustainable peace. It is recommended that: (1) the AYGS be replicated on other parts of the continent and throughout the diaspora; (2) publications from emerging leaders and followers in the research/knowledge production community begin to increase; and (3) establishment and expansion of leadership development programs for research leaders and followers in African graduate programs.

The purpose of this paper is to trace and analyse the relationship between information and democracy in the old and in the new South Africa. The authors interrogate the applicability to the situation of the famous quotation attributed to Thomas Jefferson, “Information is the currency of Democracy”.

The authors frame the argument by analysing the differences in philosophy underpinning the state’s attitude to the free flow of information between the pre-democratic regime (often referred to as the Apartheid regime which came into power in 1948) and the current democratic state established in 1994.

While the philosophical approach between the two regimes is demonstrably different – the findings show the discontinuities – the authors also find evidence of continuities. The authors examine traces of recurrent patterns and propose reasons for their persistence.

Because South Africa is a very young democracy it presents unique opportunities for social scientists to analyse the unfolding of challenges and opportunities not readily apparent in mature democracies. The theme of the issue allowed us to study and observe the evolution and growth of policy related to the free flow of information, and also to examine the current drift between policy and practice.